Thursday, December 24, 2009

On behalf of Miss Eyre and myself, and all the elves and gnomes who labor to select the fonts and type sizes that go into these posts, I want to wish all our readers a great holiday. I hope all the teachers reading this have a restful and well-deserved week off. Lord knows you need it (the tabloids certainly don't know).

Stay warm, stay happy, and stay home. To the left is a snowman that Miss Eyre built yesterday, with the help of my indispensable supervisory skills. When she asked me to come over and help, I pointed out that this was a yes/ no question, that it was unacceptably basic, and that it did not elicit sufficient reflection. I gave her a copy of Bloom's Taxonomy, but rather than a simple thank you, she threw a snowball at me.

To show my support, I went back inside and turned up the heat. Then I screamed from a window how I didn't like the size, how I wanted more groupwork, that the aim wasn't written in the snow in the form of a question, how she spent too long directly forming the snowman, not enough time letting it discover its own path, and failed to summarize or assign a reinforcing homework task when the snowman finally went up. It was enormously helpful, though for some reason she kept glaring at me with something not remotely approaching gratitude.

Go figure. In any case, I pretended to listen carefully while she explained why she did what she did, and nodded my head at what seemed to be strategic moments. Actually I was completely focused on the sandwich I was planning to eat for lunch. Mustard or mayo, I kept asking myself. Some days, you just don't know which way to go. When she finally finished talking, I wrote the whole thing up and put the entire critique in her file. In any case, now that the thing's done, I'm very proud of it, and can't wait to share my accomplishments with everyone. In fact, it came out so well I fully expect to get merit pay.

Whatever you do, don't get in your car and drive to Canada. That's nuts, especially in this weather!

On behalf of Miss Eyre and myself, and all the elves and gnomes who labor to select the fonts and type sizes that go into these posts, I want to wish all our readers a great holiday. I hope all the teachers reading this have a restful and well-deserved week off. Lord knows you need it (the tabloids certainly don't know).

Stay warm, stay happy, and stay home. To the left is a snowman that Miss Eyre built yesterday, with the help of my indispensable supervisory skills. When she asked me to come over and help, I pointed out that this was a yes/ no question, that it was unacceptably basic, and that it did not elicit sufficient reflection. I gave her a copy of Bloom's Taxonomy, but rather than a simple thank you, she threw a snowball at me.

To show my support, I went back inside and turned up the heat. Then I screamed from a window how I didn't like the size, how I wanted more groupwork, that the aim wasn't written in the snow in the form of a question, how she spent too long directly forming the snowman, not enough time letting it discover its own path, and failed to summarize or assign a reinforcing homework task when the snowman finally went up. It was enormously helpful, though for some reason she kept glaring at me with something not remotely approaching gratitude.

Go figure. In any case, I pretended to listen carefully while she explained why she did what she did, and nodded my head at what seemed to be strategic moments. Actually I was completely focused on the sandwich I was planning to eat for lunch. Mustard or mayo, I kept asking myself. Some days, you just don't know which way to go. When she finally finished talking, I wrote the whole thing up and put the entire critique in her file. In any case, now that the thing's done, I'm very proud of it, and can't wait to share my accomplishments with everyone. In fact, it came out so well I fully expect to get merit pay.

Whatever you do, don't get in your car and drive to Canada. That's nuts, especially in this weather!

Top Secret Correspondence

Quoteworthy

At this point, the only reason left to support this President, is that he reflects your hateful heart; he shares your contempt of people of color, your hostility toward outsiders, your toxic misogyny, your ignorant bigotry, your feeling of supremacy.

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Views expressed herein are solely those of the author or authors, and do not reflect views of my employers, the United Federation of Teachers, or any UFT union caucus.

Stories herein containing unnamed or invented characters are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.